Faded Pictures
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: The memories were all there, the images flipping through their minds, faster and faster...almost like a photo album in which they could remember everything, but at the same time, the edges weren't as clear as they'd once been.
1. The Memories of Home

**A/N: Pretty much a fic prompted by a challenge over on LJ. Muse got carried away, and decided to turn it into a chaptered thing. Follows "Homicide: Life Everlasting" canon in that Lt. Giardello has passed on, but other than that, is kind of AU. Don't own H:LOTS or Law and Order: SVU, and that's about it. **

* * *

He can still remember the last time he was here.

The lights had been dim, there had been music playing from the jukebox still situated at the back of the room, and everyone else had been there, too.

It had been one of _those_ nights, one where they'd closed a redball case and where all of them were looking to relax. One of those nights where they sat around and talked until the early hours of the morning before drifting apart, going in different directions, towards home. There they'd been, every one of them thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. Gee was in the hospital, yes, but he was all right; he would make it, and be released and everything would be fine.

And then, just like that, all of their illusions had been shattered.

* * *

Now, John Munch finds himself walking into the Waterfront, only to find the place completely silent, and completely dark, save for the light coming in through the front windows.

None of the old murder police had the heart to come back after the news came down that their lieutenant had died. He knows that Lewis tries, comes in as often as he can for as long as he can stand before he has to leave; knows that Bayliss gave up on it and disappeared again, coming back just in time to keep from losing his place on the squad. He knows that he fled, after the funeral, back to New York, to get away from the memory of Baltimore's bleeding streets, but the streets that never slept were even worse.

Those streets were home now, he'd told himself then, but even years later, it still didn't feel right.

That was the problem. Manhattan never felt right, but now, back here in Baltimore, it feels like he never left.

* * *

Of course, he did leave.

But there was a running joke in Homicide that said no matter how often you left or how long you stayed away, sooner or later, you would always end up coming back home.

He'd fought against the inevitable. Tried to stay in New York for as long as he could, and it had lasted for so long that he'd started to think that he'd never come back. That he'd never again have to walk this city's streets, and remember all that had come during his years as a murder police: the redball cases that seemed to pile up, the firestorm that left three of his colleagues hanging in the balance, the Mahoney drug war and the squad room shootout that tore the shift apart.

He didn't want to remember blood on his shoes, aiming a gun at an unseen suspect shooting from above, a colleague's suicide or another's murder.

* * *

But he does remember.

He reaches out now to turn on the lights above the bar, because it's getting dark outside, and he wants to be able to see. It is impossible to forget any of it, even those cases that were not his own. Impossible to forget the names in a row on the board as he first remembers it: Bolander, Munch, Howard, Felton, Lewis, Crosetti, Bayliss and Pembleton. The old line, the one he started out with, and the one he always thought he would finish with, but the one that disappeared first.

He sits on one of the bar stools, and remembers: Bolander and Felton going to New York, and neither of them returning, placed on a twenty-two week suspension. Bolander retiring, but Felton coming back, going to IID without a word, only to be found murdered in his own apartment. Department divers pulling Crosetti's body out of the river, a suicide that none of them had ever seen coming. Lewis, lost without a partner until someone else finally came in. Unit veteran Pembleton, long without a partner, finally forced to take then-rookie Bayliss under his wings. And finally, Howard, with her perfect clearance rate, the only woman in the squad until Russert came along.

The problem is that he wants to remember some things, but not everything…and everything always seems to come.

* * *

He can see the new names on the board, too, as he finally gets up to pour himself a drink: Russert, Kellerman, Ballard, Gharty, Falsone, Stivers and Sheppard. The one who'd served as a lieutenant and a captain before being shoved back to detective, and the one who'd transferred in from Arson on a whim. The detective who'd transferred from Seattle, and the one from IID who somehow ended up in Homicide by some move made solely on the basis of department politics. A detective from Auto Theft, and one from Narcotics, and finally, during his last year there, one from the Fugitive squad.

They were the definition of 'ragtag band of misfits', he thinks, now, and downs the contents of the shot glass he's poured.

At the same time, they had been the elite of the Baltimore City Police Department, the ones whom everyone else had their eyes on, and the ones who had learned quickly not to take the job too seriously. They were cops, yes, but it didn't mean they had to lose their sense of humor.

And heaven only knew they hadn't.

* * *

Nights in the Waterfront are non-existent now.

He's taken back his promise never to come back to Baltimore, coming down as often as he could. After Gee's death, it seemed wrong to stay away, to not catch up with the other members of the shift. Guilt is a feeling that he remembers clearly: how could he have gone so far from home? How could he have let himself lose contact with those he'd known and loved, so much that when he came home again, he had no idea what the hell was going on?

This is the last trip, he tells himself now. You're not going back to New York, not going back to the NYPD, or the Special Victims Unit. You're not going to answer any more phones, pick up any more cases…none of it.

You're done.

* * *

He'd said that once before, and he remembers this, too, with a faint smirk on his face as he pours another shot.

Going to New York in the first place had really been an act of desperation, a need to get away from this place where he'd been for most of his life and see something else.

What he hadn't counted on was that work in the Special Victims Unit would be worse…much worse. Of course, it hits him now that he should have figured, given that he'd known the nature of the work when he walked in. Somehow, dead bodies were a lot easier to deal with…there wasn't nearly as much emotional attachment.

Oh, but that was a key rule of SVU. You weren't supposed to get personally involved. The problem was that no one ever told any of them how to avoid it. So they got personally involved and held every case close to their heart, which was exactly what they shouldn't have been doing, but they were stubborn, the four of them together, and so they did what they had to in order to get the cases solved.

* * *

It took a toll on them.

None of them ever thought it would, but it did, no matter how hard they tried to keep it from doing so.

There was no board in the SVU squad room, no way for them to keep track of the open cases and the closed ones. No…in SVU, there were manila folders spread across the desks, paperwork, and a digital board on which they could project crime scenes, photos of suspects, and anything else they wanted. There were no names in red, no names in black, and in place of two shift lieutenants, there was one captain who oversaw everything.

The door to the Waterfront opens, but he doesn't notice this, thinking instead on how much he and the old shift hated Captain Gaffney, and how he and the rest of SVU never had anything but a mutual respect for Captain Cragen.

The hand on his shoulder makes him jump.

* * *

When he turns, the person behind him is familiar.

"I saw the lights on," Kay Howard remarks. "Thought Meldrick might have wandered over here."

"No such luck," John replies, smirking back at her and grateful for the distraction. "Can I get you anything?"

But Kay has already wandered behind the bar to pour her own drink, and in doing so, she refills the shot glass still in front of him.

"I've got it," she says. "What brings you back to Charm City?"

* * *

Kay has retired, he knows, with a captain's rank and the pension to match. Meldrick, too, has gone, though Tim is still on the lines. Pembleton left years ago, Felton and Crosetti, and now Gee have passed, and none of them have seen Bolander in years.

Of the old shift, the one John started with, it is starting to feel like he and Kay and Tim and Meldrick are the only ones left.

"I'm done," he says finally. "I'm home now."

There is no explanation needed; Kay already knows what he means.

"Told you so," she replies. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"I got tired of New York. Couldn't take the faces anymore, y'know?" John trails off and sighs. "The names were easier."

* * *

Kay nods briefly, takes a sip from her glass and leans forward. "What was it like?" she asks.

It is a question from one cop to another, not one of any sort of morbid curiosity, and it is for this reason that John looks at her for a long moment before answering.

"It wasn't Homicide," he says. "It…it was harder, dealing with the live victims. And the ones who didn't make it...I thought I was used to the bodies, y'know?"

"But you were wrong," says Kay, and he nods.

"I was wrong. In more ways than one." John pushes the shot glass aside, having decided he's had enough for a while, and picks up where he left off. "I shouldn't have left."

"Too late to change your mind, Munch," Kay remarks, and he nods again.

"I know."

* * *

In SVU, there was always the feeling that while the unit was kind of like a makeshift family, the partners weren't like blood.

Of course, they would always have each other's backs, that much was a given, but it never felt the same as the shift.

He'd been in Pembleton's role once, made to take a rookie under his wings, until Cassidy left for Narcotics. Then he'd worked with Jeffries, the same way he'd worked with Russert: a partnership of guns and sarcasm, names in red, names in black, and in SVU, with Jeffries, closed cases, convictions, and two detectives walking out of the squad room in different directions at the end of the day.

Then Tutuola had come from Narcotics over in Brooklyn, and it had changed again: two veterans, both of them too jaded for their own good, but neither one of them willing to admit it.

* * *

That had been part of the problem.

Oh, they'd gotten along well enough, John thinks now, but it wasn't like Baltimore, not at all.

SVU was one of those squads where the connection between the detectives ended the minute shift was over. It was a place where he'd always felt somewhat lost, because there was no one to really lean on, not in the way he'd leaned on the other murder police.

"There wasn't anyone to see that I was falling," he says after a while. "Does that make any sense to you?"

Kay nods. After all, it was exactly how she'd felt during her time in the fugitive squad: like she was falling, and there was no one to catch her before she hit the ground.

* * *

"It makes perfect sense," she says, and then, "You know, when Bayliss and I came up on the Charm Bracelets cases…"

"You saw it, didn't you?" John asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, I saw it. Why didn't you ever say anything? We would've taken you back in a heartbeat."

"I know. That was why I didn't say anything."

"You always were the stubborn kind."

"Would it surprise you that I only stayed because I wanted to prove a point?"

* * *

In all honesty, it wouldn't surprise her one bit.

Outside, the streetlights have started to come on. Darkness has fallen over Baltimore, and yet, here the two of them still are, sitting in a dimly-lit bar, thinking back on the past.

"What point was that?" Kay asks finally. "That you could leave and never come back home again?"

"Yes," John admits, looking straight past her, out the windows towards the headquarters building across the street. "I wanted to see if I could break the pattern."

"No such luck," says Kay. "Every one of us was always going to end up back here. There's no getting away from it."

* * *

He and the others used to tease her, about how superstitious she could be.

He remembers in particular one incident in which a black cat had followed Bayliss and Pembleton in from outside and into the break room; remembers watching Kay move quickly away from it, then close her eyes and spin in circles.

"More of your superstition?" he asks, and she swats at him, smirking faintly.

"More truth than superstition," she says. "You told me you weren't ever coming back to Baltimore."

"That flew out the window after Gee."

"I know. Therefore, your staying in New York didn't really prove anything. You still couldn't stay away."


	2. What We Used to Be

****

A/N: Still haven't decided how many chapters this one will have, but it'll definitely be more than two. That's about it for now, so have at it.

* * *

The doors to the bar open again, the overhead bells clanging loudly as they swing shut behind the new arrival.

Kay has disappeared into the kitchen area of the bar, in search of something to eat, but John is still sitting at the bar, and so he is the first one that Meldrick Lewis sees.

"Would you look at that?" he says, unable to keep an incredulous note out of his voice. "Here we were thinkin' we weren't ever gonna see you again, and now here you are, sittin' here like you own the place."

"Meldrick," John says dryly, "I _do_ own the place; or rather, I own part of it. Where have you been hiding?"

"Around," Meldrick says vaguely. "Anyone else here with you?"

* * *

Kay's voice drifts out from the back, almost as if on cue.

"Around, my eye," she says. "He's been sitting in the squad room shooting the breeze with Bayliss, because he's bored."

John laughs. For some reason, the sound is a strange one, and he knows exactly why: the years in New York have done much to take the humor out of life.

"Who'd have thought?" he asks, casting a half-amused look in Meldrick's direction. "Aren't you the very one who used to say there was no getting bored here in Baltimore."

"That was before I retired," Meldrick replies. "Now I'm startin' to understand why it's so hard to stay away."

At this point, Kay sticks her head out of the kitchen. "I could have told you that a long time ago."

"Probably," says Meldrick, after a brief moment of silence. "But then you wouldn't be able to tell me 'I told you so' now."

"Sure I would," Kay replies, before disappearing into the kitchen again. "It would just have to be about something different."

Meldrick shakes his head, leans over the bar and pulls up a bottle with one hand, and a glass with the other.

"Never changes," he says, putting the glass down on the counter. "She's always got something to say."

* * *

"I heard that," Kay tells him. "And for that matter, I was hardly the only one who always had something to say."

This comment is directed at John, who waves off Meldrick's offer to refill the empty shot glass in front of him, and smirks in the general direction of where Kay is.

"There's another thing about Homicide," he remarks. "We had a sense of humor. No matter how bad things got, or how many redball cases we got landed with, we could always find something to laugh about."

"Sometimes at the expense of others," says Kay. "D'you remember the Ellison case?"

John and Meldrick exchange glances, and then look towards Kay as she comes out of the kitchen, carrying two plates.

"What, I'm going to let you two sit here and starve?" she asks, misinterpreting their expressions. Meldrick shakes his head.

"Nah, that ain't it," he says, taking one of the plates. "We're just wondering how the hell you remember all these old cases."

* * *

Kay disappears for a third time, back again in a few minutes with another plate. "It's a gift," she says wryly. "D'you remember it or not?"

"Yeah, I remember it," says John, before Meldrick can reply. "Tourist family; the mother was killed during a mugging gone wrong. What about it?"

"Finding something to laugh about," Kay tells him. "Felton was primary, it was a redball because of the tourist factor, and all he could do was sit there and joke about overtime."

"Oh. That."

All three of them remember this, partly because overtime was one of those things that they used to joke about a lot, but mostly because Beau Felton's comments had been overheard by the victim's husband. It was one of those rare times where the shift's rather dark sense of humor got them into trouble, and something they didn't think about often.

The strange thing about it was that somewhere in the sarcasm, they'd all found a way to cope.

* * *

It was like that in SVU, too.

Somehow, the sarcasm had given the four detectives an out. A way to vent whatever it was that they were feeling, and they felt a lot. They weren't supposed to feel a lot, but they did. The NYPD had said the average run in any of the Special Victims Units was two years, and by that point, you'd burn out.

By the time John had come in, back in 1999, Stabler had already been there for eight years. He'd been the unit veteran the same way Bolander had been, the last one standing of the line he'd started with. Benson had been there for a year, Jeffries for ten months and Cassidy for eight.

It had been a strange feeling, going from being a veteran to being a rookie, but by the time his first year had passed, it was like he'd been there for years already.

"We got a lot of than in SVU," John remarks finally. "The sarcasm, I mean. It made it easier to deal with."

Easier, but not any less haunting. Kay and Meldrick look over at him, but say nothing; after a moment, he goes on.

"You lose count of how many nights you stay awake," he says. "Walking back and forth in an apartment that's probably half the size of this bar, thinking that you don't want to do it anymore, but for some reason, you can't walk away."

He trails off then, and waits. Still, neither of his fellow former murder police say anything, so once again, he picks up where he left off.

"The names are easier than the faces," he says, repeating a comment he's already made to Kay. "It was just easier not to know."

Finally, Meldrick speaks. "Not so different from the ones who made it," he says. "The ones we looked in the eye, just because they were lucky enough not to die."

* * *

It isn't, really, John muses, and nods, briefly, in agreement. "Not so different," he repeats, and then, "Somehow, working sex crimes is worse than working murders."

Meldrick reaches for the bottle still sitting on the bar and fills the shot glass sitting in front of John.

"I went there too, y'know," he said. "After…after Gee. Couldn't stay in Homicide anymore, but sex crimes was just…You saw the bodies, it wasn't as bad, but lookin' someone in the eye and not seeing any light there..."

"It got to you, didn't it?" John asks, flatly. Meldrick nods and he goes on. "You went back to Homicide."

Once again, Kay has been proven right: none of them could stay away.

She doesn't say anything about this, though, and instead changes the subject. "You know, sometimes when I drop by the squad room, I half-expect to see Gee walkin' out of the office."

Faint smiles cross the faces of her companions; every now and then, they feel the same way. They go to the squad room, sometimes thinking that they'll see the old one, the way it existed before the squad room shootout. They walk in, thinking that when the door to the shift commander's office opens, they'll see Lieutenant Giardello, but has been a long, long time since any of them have seen him.

"Doesn't seem right without him there," says Meldrick, breaking the silence that has fallen between them. "Like the shift ain't really the shift, y'know?"

"It hasn't been the shift for years now," John says dryly. "Not since 1994."

* * *

1994 was the year they lost Crosetti, and the year that things kind of started falling apart at the seams.

Exactly a month and twenty-five days after Bolander had become primary on the case that was Steve Crosetti's suicide, he'd been shot in the head during an ambush come about because of an arrest warrant bearing wrong information.

Kay had gone down in that ambush as well, shot through the heart; barely two feet away from her, Felton had fallen, too.

"Everything got shot to hell in '94," Kay says now, shaking her head. "You two remember how we used to sit around and joke about how things were always gonna stay the same, don't you?"

"Should've known better," says Meldrick. "It was all bound to change sooner or later, maybe for better, maybe for worse…"

He reaches across the bar for Kay's hand, then, and squeezes once before letting go.

John pretends not to notice this, the way he and everyone else had pretended not to notice years ago, partly because they didn't want to have to answer Gee if he asked and partly because it was just easier that way.

"Maybe for both," he says. "What do you think?"

"We're still here, aren't we?" Kay asks. "Guess you could say it changed for both."

* * *

'Both', however, is not an option, and all three of them know it.

For years, it has always been one way or the other, and the fact that they are technically no longer police hasn't changed anything.

One of the streetlights outside flickers. Kay looks at her watch, and then across the street at headquarters.

"First shift is almost up," she says.

"Counting down, are we?" John asks, and she nods, a rueful expression crossing her face.

"Never used to do that," she remarks. "Not unless there was a redball."

"Yeah, and then we were only counting down until we could put in for overtime," Meldrick replies.

All three of them laugh.

* * *

It hits them once silence falls again that it's been a while since they've all done that at the same time.

"The city that never sleeps," John says, after a moment. "You know, they're not lying when they say that. New York City really never sleeps."

"Always something going on, huh?" Kay asks.

"You ought to know, you were up there long enough," John tells her. "If it wasn't one thing, it was another."

"And it was your old squad at your throat because they didn't like me, and they didn't like Bayliss," says Kay. "You knew they weren't going to like us."

"That was mostly because I didn't tell them you were coming," says John. "If I had told them, they might have liked you well enough. Maybe not Bayliss, but you."


	3. From Where We Were to Where We Are

**A/N: And the second update of the night....**

* * *

"I heard that."

The door to the Waterfront has opened again, without Kay or John or Meldrick noticing. Kay's countdown has gone forgotten, and now the first shift is up.

The last one standing of the line as it used to be makes an appearance in the form of Tim Bayliss, close to retiring himself, but not yet there.

"Those New York cops were an unforgiving lot, weren't they?" he asks, closing the door behind him and taking off his coat. "You'd have thought they'd never worked with anyone outside their unit before."

"Oh, they have," says John. "They just don't like to."

* * *

The Charm Bracelets case was more of a turf war thing than anything else.

It had started out in Baltimore, faded away to a distant memory, and then started up again in New York.

"They're more tight-knit than they are unforgiving," John remarks, picking up where he trailed off. "They didn't like me when I first came in, either."

"Let me guess," says Kay. "The only one who didn't like you was Stabler."

"Ah, you remember their names," says John, smirking. "Would that I could forget them, but somehow, I doubt it's going to happen."

"You never forget your first unit," says Tim, and upon noticing the slightly amused looks from the others, "You know what I mean."

* * *

They do, too.

Kay actually started out in the white collar crimes unit, a place that she hated because she didn't fit into.

Now, she lifts herself up so that she is sitting on the bar and sighs. "White collar," she says. "Chasing after stolen artwork and whatnot, rarely ever finding it…Sure, we found the person who took it, but by the time that happened, it was already long gone."

"You had a perfect clearance rate there, too, didn't you?" John asks. Kay rolls her eyes.

"Hardly," she tells him. "I didn't get there till I got to Homicide. Somehow chasing after paintings never really appealed to me."

Once again, she trails off, looks towards the headquarters building. A long moment passes before she goes on.

"The work was easy enough," she says. "But it wasn't what I wanted."

She reaches out and swats at Meldrick, purposely aiming so that she misses his arm by inches. "I come to Homicide, pick up my first case, I'm thinking…This is where I'm supposed to be."

* * *

Meldrick reaches out and grabs the counter to keep from falling off the bar stool, having moved to dodge Kay's hand.

He came in from a beat, the others know, from a stationhouse in the Northeastern.

"Ain't nothin' worse than walking a beat in a uniform," he says. "Navy blue, too, almost black. You're warm in the winter, hotter than hell in the summer…"

Tim laughs and disappears into the back, to find something to eat, as Meldrick continues.

"Thought I was gonna be there longer than I was," he remarks. "Could say getting promoted wasn't anything but luck."

"In your case, I'd have to say that's probably true," says John. Meldrick ignores this and goes on.

"Same thing happened," he says, directing this remark to Kay. "I get to Homicide, I start thinking it's where I was supposed to end up."

* * *

"Well, it's where we all ended up coming back to," John says dryly. "It had to be true in one way or another."

"Yeah?" Tim asks, his voice drifting out from the kitchen. "Where'd you come in from?"

"Southwestern," John replies. "Too many drug murders. Guess if you respond to enough of them, they figure you're good enough to join the big league."

"Then you land the Charm Bracelets case," says Kay.

"That one was a piece of work," John replies, shaking his head. "Never thought it would end up the way it did."

"The brass were talking about sending you on over to Missing Persons or something after a few months in," Meldrick remarks.

"Don't I know it," says John. "Hell, it was all I could do to keep my head above the water with that one, but still…even if the brass had tried to move me, I'd have wanted to stay."

"This from the man who told us in '99 that he was never coming back to Baltimore," says Tim, coming out of the kitchen with a plate of his own. "Ate your words on that one, didn't you?"

* * *

He remains standing, next to Kay and across from John and Meldrick as he goes on, frowning up at the flickering overhead light.

"We've gotta do something about these lights," he says, and then, "City Hall wasn't as easy as you guys might have thought it was."

"Of course it wasn't," says Kay. "Half of us didn't like the mayor, but didn't care what happened to him, and the other half didn't like him and in one way or another wanted him to die."

Tim laughs. "That sounds about right," he says. "You know I only got pulled over there because I'd been in QRT?"

"They probably wanted to know that there was someone on the detail who'd take the shot if it was needed," Meldrick remarks. "Heaven only knows half of 'em probably wouldn't have."

There is a small truth in this that amuses all of them greatly; they try to avoid each other's gazes, knowing that they'll laugh if they look at each other, but it doesn't work.

Once the laughter subsides, the sound of a car backfiring fills the silence, and almost simultaneously, all of them are reaching for guns in shoulder holsters that none of them have except for Tim.

"Once a cop, always a cop," says Kay, when the moment has passed. "Funny how that never changes, huh?"

It is, but in that twisted sort of way where it isn't _really_ funny, but because they all know where it's coming from, it is.

"So, how'd you retire?" Meldrick asks, turning to poke at John again. "You go for the fanfare, or did you just disappear quietly?"

"I disappeared quietly," John replies, suddenly serious. "There wasn't anyone in New York to really care that I was leaving."

* * *

It would have been different in Baltimore.

He knows this because he came down for Kay's retirement ceremony, and for Meldrick's. All of the old murder police who were still alive had come, and for a moment, they had once again been the shift they knew and loved: the city's elite, the unshakable ones who could handle anything the world threw at them.

There were always cracks beneath the surface, though.

"You could have told us," says Tim. "We would've come to New York."

John looks at him, then, and for a moment, sees the wide-eyed rookie who came into Homicide and picked up the quagmire that was the Adena Watson case.

"I know you would have," he says. "I just wasn't sure I wanted you to."

* * *

The silence after this tells him that the other three want a more elaborate answer than that; resigned to giving one, he sighs and leans forward so that his elbow is resting on the bar.

"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times," he says. "New York is cold. And I don't mean like winter cold, either. I mean you could go the entire day just wandering around the city and not one person you walked by would bother to say so much as hello."

It was enough to make him feel like he hadn't been jaded at all in Baltimore, not one bit, because Baltimore might have been a hard city, but New York was even harder.

"You know what the stupid thing is?" he asks, and then, "My heart was in it at first, but after a few years, I was just going through the motions. I didn't want to be there."

"But you couldn't leave," says Meldrick.

"Nah. I could have gone. I was just too used to being a cop," John says wryly. "The idea of really retiring scared the hell out of me."

* * *

Retiring means days of sitting around doing nothing, drawing a pension because hey, you put in your years, and damn it, you deserve it.

It also means hours of sitting in the shift commander's office, poking at the new guy, who's actually one of the old guys, just because you can.

"Don't look at me," Tim says. "I've still got a few years left."

Kay laughs. "Way to make us feel old and decrepit, Bayliss."

"That isn't what I meant," Tim replies. "What I meant was that the idea of retiring hasn't gotten to the point where it scares the hell out of me yet."

"Of course not," says John, downing the latest contents of the shot glass in front of him. "You're still young; like you said, you've got a few years left. There's nothing for you to worry about."

* * *

This, in itself, isn't exactly true.

In New York, John muses, you can give your twenty years and get your pension, and then not worry about having to come back to solve a case, because the work is no longer your problem.

It's not that way in Baltimore. In Baltimore, you can give your thirty, get your pension, and still come back because no matter how long ago you left, the emotional attachment is still there.

"So, why didn't you stay in New York?" Tim asks finally. John sighs.

"Because Manhattan is a pain in the ass," he replies bluntly. "I never felt like home there, as I've told our dear Captain Howard and Lieutenant Lewis, therefore, I came back."

"Twelve years to make a sergeant, huh?" Kay asks, poking at John. He swats at her hand, shaking his head.

Twelve years is the amount of time that passed between the sergeant's exam in Baltimore and the sergeant's exam in New York.

* * *

To this day, Kay still likes to give him hell about it.

"Twelve years, and ten of those in SVU, mind," he says. "I should think that more than qualifies me."

They are definitely a ragtag band of misfits. But at the same time, somehow, they all fit together. Out of the old line, two died as detectives, two retired as detectives. One died as a lieutenant…one retired as a captain, one as a lieutenant and one as a sergeant, of a different department, but still a murder police.

"I should think you were qualified when you were a murder police," says Kay, the words slipping out before she can think about them.

John reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Once a murder police, always a murder police."

* * *

All of them laugh.

The sound fills the Waterfront the way the same sound used to fill the Waterfront, years ago.

"You remember when we bought this place?" Tim asks, his question directed at John and Meldrick. Both of them shake their heads.

"Damned if this wasn't the most complicated bar to open in all of Baltimore," says Meldrick. "The loans, the liquor licenses…"

"Worth it, though," says John, taking a look around the place. "Could do with new lights, maybe."

"Ought to revive the place," Kay remarks. "Could do with a place to get away from the rest of the world, you think?"

* * *

This is definitely a thought.

"This place…You know, Kellerman told me that after we heard Gee died in this place, he couldn't come back," Tim says. "Almost like it was jinxed, you know?"

"Like we weren't ever going to hear anything but bad news here?" Kay asks, and then, "I can see why he'd think that."

Meldrick laughs. "I'll bet you can," he says, and to Tim, "When'd you hear from Mikey?"

"Eh…couple of weeks ago, maybe?" says Tim, not sounding all that certain of how long ago it was. "He came by the squad room about something or other…case one of my detectives had."

"Yeah? How's he doing, anyway?" John asks.

"Seemed all right. Hung around in my office; we talked for a while." Tim trails off and sighs. "I got the impression that he missed being a cop."


	4. Like a Pull at the Seams

**A/N: The first of two chapters for the night...**

* * *

The door to the Waterfront opens for a fourth time, the bells clanging loudly once again as the door closes behind the new arrival.

"I don't miss it," Mike Kellerman says, but there is enough sarcasm in his voice to let the others know that he doesn't mean it. "Double shifts, redballs, the brass breathing down our necks about everything…Nah. I don't miss it at all."

"You're a damn liar," says Meldrick, pointing at his former partner. "And you wanna know how I know that?"

"Enlighten me," says Mike, taking the bottle of Jim Beam and the shot glass that Tim holds out to him. He fills the glass and downs the contents, putting the bottle back down on the bar as he waits for an answer.

"I can see it in your face," Meldrick replies. "That look you got, like you wish you were the one sitting in the lieutenant's office."

Mike snorts. "I think I'll leave the game of kiss-ass to Bayliss," he says, turning so that he can see Kay. Tim's hand barely misses the back of his head as he continues. "How goes it, Captain?"

* * *

"It goes how it goes," Kay replies. "Good, mostly. Of course, your dear partner over there makes things a bit complicated, but that's easy enough to handle."

Meldrick gives her a hurt look. "_I_ make things complicated?" he asks. "You're the one who was sittin' up there in that captain's office."

"That has nothing to do with anything," Kay starts, but before that conversation can get any further than it does, Tim cuts in.

"Rumor has it they want me in that office," he says.

Mike laughs. "That ought to be something," he says, pouring another shot glass. "Captain Tim Bayliss. Who'd have thought?"

Tim makes a face. "I don't think it'll happen," he says, and pauses for a moment before smirking. "I've caused too much trouble as a lieutenant."

* * *

More laughter.

"I think it's a tradition," says John. "First Gee, then Kay, then Meldrick, now you…Every one of you determined to give the brass hell at every chance you get."

"Barnfather was a college-educated little snot who had no place in Homicide, to quote Lieutenant Scinta," says Kay.

"Scinta's retirement was a load of crap," says Tim, shaking his head. "He shouldn't have gone out that way."

"Department politics at its' best," says Mike. "You know, they tried to do the same to Lieutenant Pearson right after Gee died."

"No," says Kay, looking startled. "Pearson? Really?"

* * *

This is news to all of them, at least, those who never served in the Arson squad.

But Mike is an old Arson squad veteran, and still keeps contact with his old commander, and he nods.

"Yeah," he replies. "Guess after the bribery thing, they got kinda disenchanted or whatever, but no one would go to Arson."

"This surprises you?" John asks. Mike shakes his head.

"Not really," he admits. "You know, the stupid thing was that I knew those guys were on the take, but…it was just the thin blue line thing, y'know?"

* * *

They do know.

After watching Mike throw a full glass of beer into Bob Connolly's face one night, the entire Homicide unit had pretty much figured out that the rest of the Arson squad had been on the take. It hadn't really been that hard to see.

"None of us ever really thought you were dirty," says John. "You know that, don't you?"

Mike sighs. "Now I do," he replies. "Before…I don't know. I guess I was just too caught up in my own crap to really notice that you guys would've had my back if I'd asked for your help."

Kay slides off of the bar. "You want something to eat?" she asks.

"That'd be great, but don't worry about it," says Mike, getting to his feet. "I can get it."

He walks around the bar and disappears into the kitchen.

* * *

Overhead, another light flickers.

"All right, that's it," says Tim. "I'm going to fix these damned lights tonight if it's the last thing I do."

"There should be some lightbulbs in the supply room," Meldrick replies. "Have at it."

Tim rolls his eyes, and disappears into the supply room, just as Mike comes wandering out of the kitchen, eating a sandwich.

"What am I gonna do with you guys?" Kay asks, taking her now-empty plate and holding it under Mike's hands. "You're sweeping up if you leave any crumbs."

"Yes, Mom," Mike replies, grinning. He moves aside as Kay swats at him, and goes back to where he was sitting at the bar, next to Meldrick.

"Maternal instinct finally kicking in?" John asks. Kay glares.

* * *

"I spent a good part of my career cleaning up after you lot," she tells him, "Now that we're all retired, you'd think I'd get a break, but no…"

"No, now you're not cleaning up after the likes of me, and Munch, and Bayliss," says Mike, "You're just cleaning up after the likes of Meldrick."

"Hey, I resent that," says Meldrick, "She ain't cleaning up after me, she's just…"

"Organizing your life and making sure you don't come apart at the seams," says Kay, and none of the others miss the affectionate smile that flits across her face.

None of them say anything about it, either, at least, not directly. "Partners are like blood," says Mike, and they leave it at that.

Partners are like blood, too, and all of them know it.

* * *

A conversation ensues between Kay and Meldrick, and Tim and Mike, at this point, but John remains silent, thinking about New York.

There was him, of course, and the three partners he'd had: Cassidy, wide-eyed and eager, kind of like Tim was, at first, until that one case that finally broke him enough to finally have to leave.

There was Jeffries, who stuck with him for a while, not as long as Megan Russert, and not as long as Cassidy, either.

And then there was Tutuola, and minus the year of Cassidy and Jeffries, and the year when Lake had joined the squad, the two of them had stuck together: the narc and the murder police. Two cops from two different worlds who had both somehow managed to find a balance that worked.

"How's that work in New York, Munch?" Mike asks, his voice breaking into John's thoughts. "You ever have any partners like that up there?"

"Hell, no," says John, and feels slightly guilty, because, after all, Tutuola was that sort of partner; not the sort that he could confide everything in, but still one of those partners to whom he could talk to and not feel as if he were being judged by what he said.

"Really?" Kay asks. "Not any of them?"

* * *

"Nah. They all had their own lives, and so did I. We'd get together every once in a while, but not very often," John replies. "Not like here."

"Well, here you owned a bar with two others from the shift and worked across the street; everyone was bound to gather 'round the bar at some point," says Mike. "You never did anything like this in New York?"

"Like I said, every now and then. Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Years'…that sort of thing," says John. "Other than that, not much."

"You're exaggerating," says Kay. "It can't have been that bad."

"You met Stabler, didn't you?" John asks dryly, and then, "He wasn't actually that bad, at least not at first. Things were…things were good at first."

"Ah, the truth comes out," says Meldrick. "Next thing you know, he's gonna be telling us that he likes the New York lot better."

* * *

"Keep going down that line, I just might," John tells him. "What I mean to say is that things started out all right, and then around my sixth year there, it all got shot to hell."

"Yeah? What happened?" Mike asks. John sighs.

"A lot of personal crap for all of us," he says. "Beyond what happened to me, it's not my place to say."

"Now you learn the boundary lines," Kay mutters. "Pour me a drink, will you, Bayliss?"

Tim does, and pours himself one as well.

Already, this is looking to be a long night, but for the first time in a long time, none of them mind.

* * *

"There were a few cases," says John. "This one in particular…assisted suicide. Started out as a report of someone being raped, and turned into some huge thing where someone had a website set up to help people kill themselves…"

"Shouldn't you have turned that over to another squad?" Tim asks.

"Should have. Didn't," John replies. "The person with this website, her name was Amy Solway. So, we finish this case, and think, hey, that's that. It's over and done with, case closed, nothing to worry about, right?"

"Right," says Mike. "What happened?"

"Amy pops up again. This time, the victim was dismembered, and it turns out that it's part of this whole body-parts scam. People buying and selling, for transplants and whatnot, y'know?" John trails off and shakes his head. "All that stuff we saw in Homicide doesn't come anywhere close to what I saw in SVU."

"So this was personal?" Kay asks, voice muffled by the rim of her glass.

* * *

John nods.

"Guess you could say I turned it personal," he says. "Once I met Amy, I don't know. It kind of just clicked."

"Let me get this straight," says Tim, "It clicked with a woman who had a website on assisted suicide and then ended up in the middle of a body-parts scam?"

Kay swats at him. "I'm sure he didn't mean it that way," she says. "Elaborate, will you?"

"We were friends," John replies simply. "That was it. Like on some level, we understood each other. I could see where she was coming from."

"You ever get her in the Box?" Mike asks.

"Yeah. Didn't do us any good, though. After the body-parts thing, I never saw her again, but then, she wasn't the first one that happened to."

There is something in the way he says this that makes the other four exchange looks, all of them deciding simultaneously not to push it.

* * *

"So, what brought you to the Waterfront, anyway?" Mike asks finally. "Of all the places here in Baltimore, why here?"

John shrugs. "Don't know," he says. "Got here a few hours ago, wandered around the place, ended up here."

"Oh, no you don't," says Kay. "You're not getting out of it that easily, what _really_ brought you here?"

Silence. For a moment, John debates on whether or not he wants to answer this, but on some level, he knows that Kay is really not going to let him get away with the answer he's already given.

"I wanted to see if it felt the same," he admits. "If I was going to be able to see the place was it was before we found out Gee died, but…"

He trails off there, and says nothing else.

* * *

It doesn't feel the way it used to be.

Somehow, all of them know this, but at the same time, they're all clinging to the notion that if they don't think about it, the Waterfront will be the place it was before.

Before, Kay thinks wryly, and looks at the men that sit around her. That's how they all think about it, just…before.

Before Gee died, before the rotation, before the sixth year where it all got shot to hell…just before. That was it.

"Is it?" she asks. John shakes his head, and so do Mike, Tim and Meldrick.

"It's not the same," Tim replies. "Not at all."

* * *

But still they all ended up here, in this place that they used to love.

And now that they are all here again, they find themselves wondering whether or not it could ever be this place again. Of course, none of them will say this out loud, but the thought is there.

After all these years, this is the one place where they still feel like they can get away from the rest of the world outside, even though none of them have been here at the same time in a while.

It's like a pull at the seams, Tim thinks, glancing over at the others. Somehow, something always manages to draw them back.


	5. The Personal Side of Things

**A/N: Second chapter of the day...given the fact that it's still early, however, there's a good chance that there will be more. **

* * *

This pull is the same thing that makes the doors open yet again, signaling the arrival of yet another.

"I haven't seen the lights on in here for a while," Megan Russert says, taking off her coat and laying it across a chair near the entrance. "Figured I'd stop by."

"Pull up a chair," says Kay, still sitting on the bar. "Can I get you anything?"

"Not at the moment, but thanks," Megan replies, a faint smile crossing her face. "What brings everyone here?"

"Memories," says John, and Megan, standing in a position that makes it hard for her to see past Meldrick, jumps at the sound of his voice. He smirks, and continues. "That, and a sudden need to be somewhere familiar."

"Nowhere more familiar than a bar," Mike says dryly. "Especially not one in which the bar stools have a permanent imprint of your rear end."

"That would only apply to you, Mikey," Tim says absently, and once again, there is laughter.

* * *

The years have changed much in the course of Megan's life.

After Beau Felton's murder, she decided that she couldn't go back to France, so she got divorced, took her daughter Caroline and came back to Baltimore.

Instead of returning to the department, she went back to school and became a city prosecutor.

"My papers are in," she says now. "I've got two weeks left, and then I'm done."

She, too, will finally join the ranks of those former murder police who have retired and yet still come back just because they can't stay away.

"You know what?" she asks, and all of them turn to face her as she continues. "I think I'm finally starting to understand exactly why it was that Danvers always seemed so frustrated with us."

"Only now?" Meldrick asks. "You must've had an easier time than him."

* * *

But there is no easy time for a city prosecutor, and all of them know it.

There have been a string of them to work with the Homicide unit, none of them having stuck around as long as Ed Danvers. The last any of them heard of him, he'd finally left Baltimore and settled somewhere else. None of them are really sure where he went.

"How was it looking at things from that side?" Kay asks after a moment. Megan sighs.

"Complicated," she replies. "More so than being a cop. Somehow, it was easier when a name in black meant that I didn't have to worry about it anymore."

"That is, unless you ended up with five more names in red and the brass on you to get the clearance rates back up," says Tim. "Shift lieutenants have the worst of it."

"Well, sure you do," says Kay. "You're the one that has to deal with them directly."

"Yeah, unless you're a detective who thinks it's a good idea to call them at home," says Meldrick.

* * *

Mike and Megan are the only ones who look confused by this; John and Kay both look amused, Meldrick is smirking, and Tim rolls his eyes, bending down to reach for an empty glass of his own.

"I had my reasons for that," he says. "If Barnfather hadn't opened his big mouth and shot what little I had on the Adena Watson case to hell, I wouldn't have called him out on it."

"To the point where he shows up in the squad room to tell Gee off because you called him a 'butthead'," says Kay. "I still can't believe you did that."

"I can," says John. "I probably would've done the same thing if it had been me."

"Surely you could have come up with something a little more creative than that," says Megan.

"Probably," John replies, "But then, it wasn't my place to call Barnfather out on that. Other things, yes, but not that."

* * *

Over the years, there have been plenty of things to call the Homicide hierarchy out on.

There was the mess with Granger and the plumbing company, the fact that Barnfather had ever been promoted over Gee in the first place…Megan's promotion and subsequent demotion, and last, but not least, Gaffney's promotion.

"Whatever happened to ol' Gaffney, anyway?" Meldrick asks, thinking of this. Kay makes a face.

"Who knows?" she asks in reply. "For that matter, who cares?"

It goes without saying that none of them really do care, even though it'd be interesting to know. What they do know was that he got shoved out of Homicide a few years after Gee died, in order for Kay to take over, and at the moment, they're assuming that at some point, he did leave the department.

"What would happen if he walked through those doors?" Tim asks, motioning towards the front.

"Well, we own the place," says John. "We have the right to refuse service to anyone, don't we?"

* * *

This remark is probably funnier than it should have been. It takes a while for the laughter to fade away this time, which is more comforting to all of them than anything else.

"If you had to name the biggest pain in the ass of Homicide, who would you name?" Tim asks, picking up where he left off. "And I mean honestly, now."

"You sure you wanna know the answer to that, Bayliss?" Meldrick asks. Tim ignores him, and tops off the glass that Kay holds out to him.

"Yes," he says, after a moment, "I do want to know, and if it's me, well, that's just too damn bad, isn't it?"

"I doubt any of us would be so stupid as to tell the only one in here carrying a loaded gun that he's a pain in the ass," Mike remarks. "Though I do have to admit, you had your moments."

"Nobody had more moments of being a pain in the ass than Gaffney," says Kay. "White Glove cases, anyone?"

Megan makes a face. "Don't remind me."

* * *

But it's not as if she ever forgot it in the first place.

Pamela Wilgis had killed three other women in Baltimore before being caught, never mind the five she'd killed in other places _before_ landing on her feet in good old Charm City.

When she'd gotten caught, it had come out that she'd suffered from multiple personalities. One minute, she was herself, the next, she was someone called JMJ.

"That had to be one of the strangest interrogations Frank and I ever did," says Tim, looking amused, even though he knows he shouldn't. "I didn't think we'd end up getting anything out of her."

"And then the city got sued, because supposedly, Frank violated her civil rights, and once again, the brass were going at us," says Kay. "Never mind all the personal crap we were dealing with."

"That was when you were dating Danvers, wasn't it?" John asks. Kay swats at him.

"No," she replies, "You'd already managed to screw that one up."

* * *

Surprisingly, there is no note of bitterness in her voice.

This, of course, is probably because she and all the other murder police know that the only reason she and Meldrick got split up as partners in the first place was because it got personal, but now that there aren't any department boundaries to worry about, it doesn't matter.

"Why is it that down here, the squad's personal lives were obvious but not overly so, and yet in SVU, the squad's personal lives seemed to take up every waking moment?" John asks.

"Maybe that unit was closer than you thought it was," says Mike. "Or maybe we just weren't as close as we thought we were."

* * *

The former is more likely than the latter.

"Nah," says Kay. "Every one of us knew a lot more than we were supposed to know. It's not that we weren't close, it was just that we weren't nosy….well, some of us, anyway."

This time, Megan is the only one who doesn't know what the point of this comment is. Mike looks over at Kay, downs another shot and shakes his head.

"You know that guy you were dating, the one in Brodie's documentary?" he asks. Kay gives him a wary look, but nods, and he goes on. "It wasn't so much being nosy as it was the fact that two years before we watched that, a couple of the guys from Arson were looking at him for a string of car fires."

Kay stares. "You're not serious."

Meldrick pokes at her. "What, you never ran background checks on your boyfriends?"

She swats back at him. "I never saw a reason to," she replies. "Who's going to be idiot enough to date a cop knowing they have a record?"

"Obviously that guy, whoever he was," Mike tells her. "As it turns out, he wasn't the guy, but the fact that we looked at him made the fact that you dated him highly amusing."

"Shove it, Kellerman," says Kay, shaking her head at him. "Could have said something before now, y'know."

Mike laughs. "Nah. It was too much fun watching Meldrick try to deal with it."

* * *

Megan watches this exchange, amused, and takes the glass of red wine that Tim holds out to her.

"I missed this," she remarks. "When I was in France. There wasn't any one group of people that I could just sit around and shoot the breeze with."

"How many groups of people were there?" John asks. Megan makes a face.

"Too many," she replies. "That's what I get for marrying a politician, right?" She trails off and glances across the street at the headquarters building. "Life in a fishbowl."

"Homicide was life in a fishbowl, too," Tim remarks. "None of us ever really knew it until the Ryland case…Everyone knew everything."

John and Meldrick avoid his gaze at this; Kay looks at the both of them with raised eyebrows.

"What's that about?" she asks, curiosity lacing her voice. "What happened?"

"Nothing," says Tim, answering mostly to spare the other two from having to say anything. "Ryland just stumbled across a website that I'd put up and decided he'd use it to broadcast one of his murders."

"That was yours?" Kay asks, startled. "No wonder the guys in the Fugitive squad kept giving me crap."

"Oh, for the love of…" Tim shakes his head, a disgusted look crossing his face, but disappearing as quickly as it comes. "The department rumor mill will never cease to amaze me."

"What was it like, anyway?" Meldrick asks. "Having to deal with all that crap, I mean."

* * *

The feeling of isolation is one that as murder police, none of them had ever really thought they'd have to feel.

Near the end of the seventh year, all of that changed.

"It hurt," Tim says finally. "A lot more than I thought it would."

Silence falls. Outside, a car horn goes off, and an unmarked squad car goes by, carrying two detectives from any one of the shifts currently on in the headquarters building.

"You could have talked to one of us, y'know," Kay says after a moment. "It didn't have to be that way."

Tim sighs. "I didn't think about that," he admits. "All I heard was what everyone outside the shift had to say."

* * *

That, he thinks, had probably been a lot of the problem.

If it had been just the shift talking behind his back and refusing to look him in the eye, he might have been able to handle that, because every now and then, they'd all go through a period where they didn't want anything to do with each other. But it hadn't been that way. Instead, it had been a few members of the shift, and a lot of people on the outside, and after a while, it had started getting to him.

He'd been the rookie, once, John and Kay and Meldrick think as they look at him, standing there at the bar looking back at them. Now, of course, he was anything but: the years as a murder police had done much to change all of them, but somehow, the changes had always been the most defined in him.

"What?" he asks them finally. "Why are you staring at me?"

"No reason," says Kay. "You talk to Frank lately?"


	6. What Hurts the Most

**A/N: And this brings the count up to three chapters for the day. Like I said, it's early, so there was always a chance there'd be more than one...muse decided it didn't want to wait. **

* * *

"Unfortunately, yes," says a new voice. "After all these years, I still can't get rid of him."

"Says the one who spends half the shift in my office whenever I'm on a night run," Tim retorts, amused. "What'll it be?"

"Bayliss, I'm surprised at you," Frank Pembleton says mildly, coming to sit beside Megan. "We were partners for six years and you still don't know what I drink?"

"Just for that, you can open your own bottle," says Tim, handing a bottle across the counter. Frank takes it, pops the top off and takes a sip.

"What brings you all here?" he asks, and then, "How long has it been?"

* * *

No one answers for a moment, all of them trying to figure out how long it has been since they were all gathered in the Waterfront.

"Almost fifteen years," Mike says finally. "So, fourteen and a few months."

Frank shakes his head. "It's been too long," he remarks. "Whatever happened to the nights like this?"

His question is a good one, and one that they all know the answer to.

The nights like this disappeared when the shift as they knew it started to disband, when the squad room shootout left them in pieces and when they got the news that the shooting they'd solved had turned into a murder.

"Never felt right after…" says Kay, trailing off.

There is no need for her to elaborate. The others already know what she means.

* * *

Fifteen years is a long time.

All of them have heard that time is supposed to heal all wounds, but that isn't the case as often as people would like to think it is.

Over the past fifteen years, there have been a lot of changes, and even before that, things were changing, but it was never as obvious then as it is now.

"Why is it that we never seem to notice that things are changing until it's too late to do a damn thing about it?" John asks, taking a potato chip from the plate next to Mike's hand.

"Because we're too busy trying to find the bad guy in the room," Kay replies. "It doesn't hit us that things are changing, or that it's supposed to hurt, until a few years down the road."

"Of all the things that we've seen in Homicide," says Tim, and trails off for a moment, unsure of whether or not he wants to finish this question, but the words come anyway. "What hurt the most?"

* * *

Once more, silence. This time, it is because no one is sure of the answer. Over the years, there have been a lot of things that hurt, but at the same time, there was always that one thing that stuck out.

"Seeing my father's face when I woke up after Gordon Pratt ambushed us," says Kay, the first to answer. Her voice is quiet but serious as she goes on. "He didn't notice I was awake at first, but just watching him sitting there…it was the first time in a long time that I wished I'd just stayed closer to home."

Home for Kay is a small town on the Chesapeake Bay, calm and quiet and far from the blood and violence of Baltimore.

It is where she grew up and learned to love the water, where she lost her mother and took on the task of helping to raise her younger siblings; therefore, it is of small wonder that this moment, seemingly insignificant to those who don't know her, would be the one thing that hurt the most.

"He told me he was proud of me, though," Kay says after a moment. "That if it was what I wanted, he'd support me, and he always did."

* * *

Tim moves a few of the plates and glasses on the bar aside so that he can climb up onto the flat surface to finally fix the lights.

"Felton's murder was the one thing that got me," Megan remarks, without looking any of the others in the eye. "To this day, I still wish I'd had one more chance to see him."

The year of the White Glove murders and the shooting had also been the year that Megan had been the second shift lieutenant, caught up in an affair with a first shift detective. All of them except for Mike know this, but he doesn't ask. The light overhead goes off as Tim unscrews the light bulb, and Megan continues.

"I fell in love with him, y'know," she says, to Kay. "I don't know what it was. Maybe I was just lonely, but…it was like a pull at the seams. I knew it wasn't a good idea, but I didn't care."

She pushes her hair back out of her eyes, a rueful smile crossing her face. "I left without telling him goodbye," she says. "And the next thing I know, I'm coming back for a funeral."

In short, it is one of those things that she regrets, maybe the one thing that she regrets the most, and it is for this reason that it also hurts the most.

* * *

"Giving up my shield near about did me in," says Mike, an admission that he has made to no one since 'waking up' on his boat with a gun in his mouth and a finger about to pull the trigger. "It was like I'd given up everything I was."

He trails off for a moment, and then shakes his head. "Actually, it _was_ giving up everything that I was. Or that I had been."

The squad room shootout had nearly done them all in; would have if Gee hadn't come out of his office and fired the shot that ended up killing Junior Bunk. The department's fury had come down hard on the streets of Baltimore faster than one could blink after that.

"I don't know what I was thinking," Mike says now, without looking at the others, and they know he is talking about the day he shot Luther Mahoney. "I used to think that I was a good cop, but after that, it fell apart."

No one says anything, and he goes on. "I wanted to believe that I hadn't done anything wrong, and after a while, I managed to convince myself that I hadn't."

"So then what?" Frank asks, and Mike turns to look at him.

"You dragged me into the Box and made me take a look at myself. I didn't like what I saw, and believe me when I say that it hurt like hell."

* * *

It always hurts to lose yourself, but even more so when you don't realize that you've lost yourself and it takes someone else to tell you that you have.

"The ambush," says John, staring at the ruby-colored wine in Megan's glass. "I went back to that building with Drummond, and I almost ran out again. I kept seeing Pratt's bullets coming down at us, kept seeing myself slipping…"

"Shouting a ten-thirteen over and over, but it felt like no one answered, right?" Tim asks, and John nods.

"Exactly," he replies. "The uniforms who were with us went tearing up the stairs, fast as they could, but Pratt just disappeared, and the entire time, we thought it was Glen Holton who'd shot at us."

He closes his eyes as the wine in Megan's glass starts to look a little bit too much like blood.

"I couldn't get a shot off," he says. "Stan falls, and then Kay, and then Beau, and I'm slipping in their blood, trying to fire back at this guy, but I can't for the life of me fire my damn gun."

Kay reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. "It's over and done with, Munch," she says quietly, "No one faults you for it."

"I fault myself," John tells her. "To this day. If we'd lost any of you…"

But he trails off, suddenly unable to go on. To this day, he faults himself, and to this day, he is still haunted by the images of that day.

* * *

"The end of the drug war," says Frank, taking things back to where Mike had left off. "The backyard of that rowhouse."

Tim takes off his glasses and takes a clean cloth from underneath the bar so he can wipe them off. "What about it?"

"Watching you get shot," says Frank. "Knowing that the fact that I'm a lousy shot to this day almost got you killed."

"You had kids," says Tim, "I didn't. I couldn't have done that to Mary, and you couldn't have, either."

Frank nods, acknowledging his former partner's remark as true, but he continues anyway. "I'm on my knees in that yard, shouting, and all Bayliss can do is try to get back up and tell me he's all right."

"I don't remember that," says Tim, and Frank casts him a half-amused look.

"You wouldn't," he replies. "They had you drugged up pretty good later on, and I just…I couldn't do it anymore."

* * *

A marked car goes by, lights flashing.

"It was raining the night I picked up the Adena Watson case," says Tim. "I remember crossing the crime scene tape and just standing there, and some uniform walks up to me and tells me to leave, so I show him my shield, and I tell him, I'm from Homicide. Just like that."

The Adena Watson case haunted him for fourteen years, before the Charm Bracelets case finally led him and John and Kay to the real killer. It comes as no surprise that even fifteen years after that, the case is still the one thing that hurts the most for him.

"It wasn't even just her case on its own." Tim picks up where he left off, sliding his glasses back on and putting the cloth back under the bar. "It was every child case. Every time one of those names went up in red, it was like some part of me was being cut away."

This, of course, led to countless nights of counting the tiny light bulbs on the string of Christmas lights that his niece put up over his bed because she thought it looked cool. It also led to large amounts of coffee being downed each morning in an effort to stay awake through an entire shift, but then, there was always a lot of coffee involved, anyway.

"No parent should ever have to outlive their child," Tim says finally. "I can't think of anything worse than that."

None of the others can, either. The worst part of the job always had been telling a parent that their child had been found dead.

* * *

Meldrick takes a sip from the half-full glass that was next to Kay's hand, vaguely aware of the fact that the others are watching him, to see what he'll say. Even so, it takes a minute before he answers the question that Tim has asked.

"Ain't nothing worse than losing your partner," he says. "The day I came into the squad room and saw Crosetti's name on the board…"

He trails off, takes another sip from the glass, and goes on. "Didn't want to believe it. Kinda felt like I was some kind of failure as a partner, y'know? I didn't know anything was wrong until it was too late."

The department refused to give an honor guard, because Crosetti's death had been ruled a suicide.

"There should have been an honor guard," Frank remarks, taking a sip from his own glass.

"Far as I'm concerned, there was," Meldrick tells him. "All that crap we gave you about not going to the funeral, and you were the only one who really showed up."


	7. A Many Splendored Thing

**A/N: And the fic is finally finished. There are two more chapters after this, and then it's finally done. Happy New Year, everyone!**

* * *

"I think I've had enough of this," says Kay, finally sliding off the bar and heading towards the jukebox in the back. "This thing still work?"

"It did the last time I was in here," Meldrick replies. He reaches into his pocket, fishing for change, and when he finds some, he, too, gets up and walks over to where she is.

"To think the department never noticed," Frank says, a note of amusement in his voice. "How long has it been for them, now?"

"Gee didn't have to split them up as partners until '91," John remarks. "At least twenty years."

"And that's on and off, too," Meldrick says over his shoulder. "You know what they say."

"Yeah…if you love her, let her go, and if she comes back, she's yours," says Mike. "Why'd you keep coming back, Kay?"

* * *

She takes the change out of Meldrick's hand and picks out a song, laughing when he pulls her out to dance with him as it starts to play.

"He's the longest relationship I've ever had with a guy," she says, unknowingly echoing a remark that John remembers hearing from someone in SVU. "Who else would put up with me?"

"If I do remember correctly, my dear Captain Howard," he says now, "All of us put up with you over the course of our years as murder police."

Kay smirks at him from behind Meldrick's arm. "You only put up with me because you didn't have a choice."

"Well, neither did Meldrick," Frank points out. "He had to work with you, too."

"I could have walked away if I'd wanted to," Meldrick tells him, casting an affectionate look at Kay as she glares at a laughing Mike. "I just didn't want to."

"You'd be an idiot to walk away," says Megan. "Somehow, I don't think it's gonna get any better than what you've got."

* * *

It probably wouldn't, either, and Meldrick knows it.

Love is one of those things that at times, seemed to elude them, mostly because it felt like they only ever had time for the job. This, of course, is hardly true in some cases, more true than anything else in others.

"Thanks, I think," says Kay, amused by Megan's remark. "Right now, I think we're just lucky it managed to work out."

"Luck has nothing to do with it," Frank tells her. "If it was meant to last, then it'll last."

"Never figured you as the sentimental type," says Mike.

"It's a one-time thing," says Frank, but all of them know that this isn't particularly true.

'Sentimental' wasn't a word that could have been used to describe any of the murder police as they were fourteen years ago, but time changes everything, including this.

* * *

"How are Mary and the kids, anyway?" Tim asks, the question of one partner to another.

"They're fine," Frank replies. "Doing well. Liv should be home in a few weeks for spring break; we're looking forward to that."

"Where'd she head off to?" John asks, almost painfully aware now of how much he's missed out on.

"North Carolina," says Frank. "She's been living with Mary's sister. Keeps telling us she wants to transfer back home, but so far, nothing."

"And you haven't thought about moving down there?" Kay asks. Frank shakes his head.

Frank shakes his head. "Nah," he replies. "New York was home once, but now Baltimore is. I couldn't leave even if I wanted to."

"Once again, we prove her theory," Meldrick remarks. "We can leave, but we always end up coming back."

* * *

An amused look crosses Tim's face at this. "I thought that only applied to Homicide."

He doesn't mean this seriously, and the others know it.

In truth, the theory applies to everything. They can leave the ones they love, but they always come back. They can leave the unit they came to think of as their home unit, but it'll always be where they end up.

They can leave the city that bleeds for other places, but ultimately, Baltimore is home, and none of them have ever been able to really, _truly_, stay away.

"Since we're on the subject of families," says Kay, poking at John, "You're not on number six, are you?"

The others laugh. John ignores this, and looks at Kay over his glasses. "No," he says, "I am not. Rowan's been taken hostage by Rose."

"Fifth time's the charm, then," says Meldrick, letting go of Kay as the song finally ends and going back towards the jukebox. "You haven't managed to stick your foot in your mouth yet?"

"Plenty of times," John replies, smirking. "I just haven't managed to piss her off enough yet, which, if I do say so myself, is somewhat of a miracle."

* * *

There is a brief lull in the conversation after this, in which Kay wanders over to where Meldrick is.

"Another miracle that's happened in your lifetime," she says, suddenly. "You remember, don't you? That Christmas Eve we were stuck on shift, and Stan brought that Christmas tree to the squad room…"

"And I asked him to name one miracle that happened in his lifetime," says John, picking up where she left off. "Yeah, I remember that. I also seem to remember him telling me that it was a miracle he hadn't killed me yet."

"It was," says Frank. "Sometimes, I think it was a miracle that we all made it through a shift without one of us ending up on the board."

This is true, the others think, half-rueful smiles crossing their faces at Frank's remark. Every now and then, it got to the point where they could only take so much of each other before it got to be too much.

Now, of course, it's changed, because nowadays, they hardly ever see each other.

* * *

This time, it is Mike who changes the subject, nodding towards Meldrick as he does. "So, what's the story with you two?" he asks. "Think you'll ever make it official?"

"Who says it isn't already?" Kay asks in reply. This remark earns her a few startled looks, and she laughs.

"Oh, come on," she says. "You really think we'd go through with it and not tell any of you?"

"That sounds like something you might do, yes," says John. "None of us are ever supposed to know everything about you, remember?"

"For some reason, I get the feeling this doesn't apply to Meldrick," says Frank. Kay casts an amused look at him.

"It doesn't," she tells him, "But he's the only one."

This doesn't surprise any of them. But then, this theory has applied to them as well: only those closest to their hearts know everything.

Everyone else knows them in pieces.

* * *

"Why is that, though?" Megan asks. "Why can some people know everything about us, but others only know pieces?"

"Because we trust some people more than others," Mike replies. "Out of all the people I know, there are only about seven people who know everything about me."

"And they're all people you'd trust with your life, right?" Meldrick asks. Mike shrugs.

"Five of them, anyway," he says. "Don't get me wrong; I love my brothers, but you guys have met 'em."

Laughter comes as a reply; it is exactly what Mike had expected, and so he pays it no mind, and continues where he left off.

"Seriously, though," he says. "Everyone in here has at least one person that knows everything about them, whether it's a parent, or a significant other, or a kid, right?"

The others nod, briefly, and wait for him to continue.

* * *

After a moment, he does.

"Those are the people closest to you," he says. "The ones who are gonna stay with you no matter what else happens. So, of course _they're_ going to know everything, because you're never going to have to be afraid that one day, they're gonna leave. Everyone else…there aren't any guarantees."

It makes sense. A lot more sense than some of the other things he's said over the years, or even things that the rest of them have said over the years.

"So, it's love, then," says John. "The simple fact that no matter what, you'll always have that someone to count on."

"Well, yeah," says Mike. "Take this for example: if you knew that in say, five years from when you got married, Rowan was going to leave, would you have told her as much as you have?"

"Probably not."

"My point exactly. So it's not just love, it's trust. Blind faith, even. You had no reason to believe that she'd leave, and at the same time, you had no reason to believe that she'd stay beyond a year or two. But you told her everything anyway."

* * *

Blind faith has a lot to do with it, too.

In their line of work, it was easy to believe solely in what the evidence had to say, and nothing else. Love was one of those theories that didn't seem to apply to them much, beyond Frank, and even then, all of them had seen the toll that the job had taken.

"The problem with someone knowing everything is that at some point, if they want to, they can use it against you," Frank says now, and Tim glances over at him.

"I'll assume you're not talking about Mary," he replies. Frank shakes his head.

"No, I'm not talking about Mary. This is hypothetical." He trails off for a moment, and then continues. "No relationship works without that kind of blind faith, though. The belief that no matter what, this person won't use the worst of what they know to hurt you."

"And even if they do, the belief that whatever they're feeling won't last forever," says Megan. "In the way of anger, I mean."

Meldrick pulls more change out of his pocket and starts another song. "Is there really anything in this world that lasts forever, though?"

* * *

Nothing really seems like it could last forever in a world like the one they live in.

Relationships dissolve, marriages crumble, lives are lost every day, and it has been a long time since any of them wondered why Baltimore was sometimes referred to as the 'city that bleeds'. Names go up on the board, names disappear from the board, lineups change, and through it all, the only _real_ constant they've had is each other.

"Define forever," says Frank. "Are we talking as in lasting until you die, or longer than a certain period of time?"

"Until we die," says Meldrick. "Something like love. Relationships. Besides you and Mary."

"Besides me and Mary," Frank repeats, and smirks. "You and Kay have lasted as long as we have, if not longer. Would you consider that forever?"

"Not yet," Meldrick replies. "We've still got a few years left."

"More than a few," says Kay. "Another lifetime, maybe."

"Haven't we already had a few of those?" John asks dryly. "All those times we've escaped death, I would think so."


	8. All in These Lifetimes

**A/N: For the record, I don't own H:LOTS, but ASA/State's Attorney Abby Williams is mine. This having been said, there is only one chapter left after this one. **

* * *

"All those times everyone else has escaped death, you mean? You got shot in the ass once, John, that hardly counts as escaping death."

"Who invited you?"

"I invited myself."

This time, the doors to the Waterfront have opened without the usual ringing of the overhead bells. In the noise of the conversation that had been taken place mere moments before, Abby Williams has wandered in, and she kicks off the shoes she's wearing before coming to sit beside Megan at the bar.

"Last time I looked, this was a public place," she says, to John. "That means I can come in here if I want to."

"I can't for the life of me figure out why, considering that he's in here," Meldrick remarks, unable to resist. Abby laughs.

"That, my dear lieutenant, would be exactly why I came in."

* * *

Before Abby retired, she was Homicide's longest-running Assistant State's Attorney, and that was before she took the office of State's Attorney.

She, too, has been through a million lifetimes and more with the murder police, both the shift that she started out with, and the ones that came along later. There is no denying that she has seen as much as them, if not more: the excuses that people can come up with are the one reason why she has never been able to say that she's seen anything.

"We were just talking about how many lifetimes we've been through," says Kay. "Any guesses?"

"At least a million," Abby says dryly, taking the glass that Tim hands her. "All the things we've seen…it's too much for just one, no?"

It really is, too.

* * *

In any given year, Baltimore has over a hundred murders, and in one year, the number almost reached four hundred. The streets are dangerous, and they all know it, but then, if they hadn't, they'd have never become cops in the first place.

"Okay, so, when did the first one begin?" Mike asks, after a moment. Abby leans back to look at him.

"Maybe…." She trails off for a moment, to think on this question, and after a few seconds, continues. "The day I left law school. And the days you guys came out of the police academy."

It makes enough sense. Life before law school and the police academy had been completely separate from life afterwards, and different in more ways than one.

"The beginning of something that would ultimately take us in over our heads," says Frank. "In other words, a move into a future that none of us could see."

* * *

Abby nods. "Exactly," she says. "The first lifetime ended the day we went in; the second began when we came out."

"So, the third started when?" John asks. "I'm assuming if we follow this theory, it began when we made detective, and when you joined the State's Attorney's office."

"That would make the most sense, wouldn't it?" says Kay, and then, "That would be when we saw most of everything."

"Yeah…department faces, redball cases and everything in between," says Tim. "You know, since I made lieutenant, it's become increasingly obvious how much crap Gee put up with to keep us out of trouble."

"Well, we didn't exactly make it easy on him," says Meldrick. "Pushing overtime, making house calls to those higher up than us…"

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?" Tim asks, and when Meldrick shakes his head, "I didn't think so."

"If anything pointed you out as the unit rookie, that was it, kid," says Abby. "Of course, there are worse things you might have said."

"Yeah, worse things that might have gotten me fired," Tim replies. He pauses for a moment, and then, "So, if the third lifetime started when we made detective, then what?"

* * *

Then it splits. Each of them reached the fourth lifetime at a different point.

"My fourth came when I went into Homicide," says Kay. "White collar was easier, but I wanted a challenge. That was what I got."

Beside her, Meldrick smirks. "Then I guess fourth came the day I got stuck with you as a partner," he says. She rolls her eyes.

"Love you, too," she replies, and looks towards the others. "What about you guys?"

"Charm Bracelets case," says John. "There was no way things were going to be the same after that one."

"Moving to the Homicide bureau," says Abby. "Actually, no…that was my fifth. My fourth started when they shoved me into the sex crimes bureau."

"Being stuck with a rookie for a partner," says Frank, deliberately avoiding looking in Tim's direction. "I suppose you could say it opened my eyes a little more."

"The Adena Watson case," says Tim, and he doesn't give a reason. But he doesn't need to, because the others already know why.

* * *

This leaves Megan, and she hesitates for a moment, almost as if she is unsure of what the others will have to say. Finally, she decides that she doesn't really care, and blurts it out.

"Meeting Felton," she says. "It doesn't really seem like it would have that kind of an effect, but…it did."

None of the others question her. This is because they all know that it is most often the little things that trigger that kind of change.

"Funny how that happens, isn't it?" Kay asks finally. "How all of us can find something that pushed us into a different stage of life, just like that?"

"Well, we're cops," says Frank. "Or rather, we _were_ cops. There was bound to be something like that at one point or another."

He has a point. Over the years, they have seen too much for one lifetime, but the number of lifetimes they've actually lived over the collective years that all of them have been alive is too hard to actually determine.

Counting is really just a way to make the time pass by.

* * *

Even so, they continue, onto the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh.

Those are the lifetimes in which Kay and Meldrick were split up as partners, and stuck instead with Felton and Crosetti. Those are also the lifetimes in which Crosetti was discovered in the river, and Felton was found murdered in his own apartment.

Those are the lifetimes where Megan was a lieutenant, then a captain, and then a detective, just like that. They are the lifetimes when she thought she'd fallen in love again, where she took her daughter and went to France, only to come back for the funeral of the man she'd _really_ been in love with.

It is, for Mike, the lifetime where he went from Arson to Homicide, the one where the Feds came through to root out corruption in the squad he'd thought he'd known, and the one where he came so close to the edge that he nearly fell over. It is the sixth year in which he left the department, and the seventh in which he found some kind of redemption.

In short, it is a lot of change over a short amount of time, because, when they look back on it now, three years wasn't really all that long.

* * *

In three years, partners came and went, a drug war turned south in the worst way possible, and for a while, an air of something they still haven't figured out hung over the Homicide unit.

Those were the lifetimes where Frank came back after recovering from his stroke, where Tim told his partner things that no one else knew. It was the sixth lifetime where he got shot and Frank left, and the seventh in which the only time either of them saw each other was those rare moments where they'd run into each other on the street. Contact slipped between them the same way it has slipped between everyone else, but no one had paid it much mind until now.

In those lifetimes, Abby worked as many cases as the murder police threw at her and Ed Danvers until she came this close to a meltdown and had to take time off, at the end of the Mahoney drug war. In three years, John went from having Megan as a partner to having no official partner, to working with Mike, who technically should have been working with Meldrick, only in that sixth lifetime for all of them, partnerships were shot to hell.

It was in the seventh lifetime that John left for New York.

* * *

"I should have started over, y'know," he remarks. "Should have started back at one, but I didn't."

"How many lifetimes were there in New York?" Kay asks. He sighs.

"Too many. At least seven. One of them started when I came back to…to help."

He doesn't need to elaborate, because the others all know what he came back to help with. Silence falls and lasts for a moment, the only sort of tribute they can give to Al Giardello now, a man and a cop who had lived more lifetimes than all of them put together.

"Did you ever regret it?" Tim asks. John shakes his head.

"Oddly enough, no," he says, holding up his hand. Light glints off a silver wedding band. "I wouldn't have this if I had never gone to New York."

It's not the only thing he wouldn't have, either. He can think of a lot of them, mostly the kind-of friendships he had with the others.

"You wouldn't have had that squad," says Megan, somehow reading into whatever expression he's now wearing. He turns to look at her.

"No, I wouldn't have," he says, and then, "I miss them already, y'know. I didn't spend nearly as much time with them as I did here in Baltimore, but…"

"They were still people you worked with," says Abby, picking up where he leaves off. He nods, and doesn't say anything else.

* * *

After a while, Frank changes the subject. "Why is it that no one seems to understand that a cop doesn't ever live just one life?"

"Because they don't see the same things we do," Tim tells him. "That's why. You can't understand what you don't know."

This, in itself, explains why they don't know the exact reason why they've all lived so many lifetimes all in one.

It is because they don't understand. Not the violence, the excuses, the crime scenes or even the department at times. Every now and then, it starts to make sense, but then something else happens, and it gets confusing again.

"You know, I used to tell Kai that she'd be a cop over my dead body, and now she's a detective," John remarks. "Now I look at her and I wonder how many lifetimes she's going to live before she lets it go."

All of them know that by 'letting it go', he doesn't mean dying, but rather retiring. It is one thing to be a cop yourself when you're a parent, but to watch your child follow in your footsteps is completely different.

"She practically grew up being raised by the old shift," says Abby. "What did you think she was going to do?"

* * *

The funny thing about this is that Kai is hardly the only child of the first shift to join the department ranks, though the number of those who have stayed away is far bigger than that of those who took the same oaths that the ones who raised them did.

"It had the same pull for them, I think," Tim says after a while. "They grew up knowing what we did for a living, and they wanted to know more. The academy was the only way for them to find out."

This, of course, isn't particularly true, because all of those who joined the department could have become city prosecutors, could have become medical examiners, social workers, paramedics…anything would have let them take a look into the world that they were kept out of. But the fact remains that nothing would have gotten them as close as going to the academy.

"They'll live as many lifetimes as we do," Frank remarks. "Maybe more. But it's their choice to make."

This is a hard truth, but all of them are used to hard truths. They have heard too many of them to be surprised by the bluntness behind Frank's words.

"Sometimes, I think our right to make the choices for them ended when they started to talk," Tim says dryly. "But even then…I mean, you never really see them grow up, do you?"

"No," says Megan, "You don't. You spend all your time holed up in the squad room, or the shift commander's office, and by the time you manage to get out, they're already doing everything on their own."

"Or you leave them to other people," says John, casting a sideways look at Abby. "The ones who _really_ watch them grow up."

"It doesn't mean they love you any less," Abby tells him, and they leave it at that.

* * *

A car drives by outside. Something pops, once, twice, three times, like the sound of a gun going off, but it isn't a gun, because there is no screaming, and no sight of people running away.

"There's been a lot of that tonight," Frank remarks. "Some kind of celebration going on, maybe?"

"Probably," says Mike. "Either that, or people who are drunk somehow managed to get a hold of fireworks, and now they're setting them off."

"That's a pretty stupid move in front of police headquarters," says Abby, shaking her head as an amused look crosses her face. "Might just be a car backfiring."


	9. One More Chance to Live

**A/N: Last chapter! Thankfully, muse has managed to stay with me through this, even though it doesn't like retirement fics, but there you have it. Once again, a Happy New Year to you all!**

* * *

"If it were a car, it wouldn't have gone off three times."

The noise outside has drowned out the sound of the doors opening and closing for what will be the last time that night. Still standing behind the bar, Tim pops the cap off of a bottle and slides it down to the counter to where Stanley Bolander sits beside Abby.

"Where the hell have you been hiding?" John asks. "We were starting to wonder if you'd fallen off the face of the planet."

"The Earth is round, John," Abby replies, "It's virtually impossible to fall off of it. You could always take a space shuttle if you wanted to get away badly enough."

"I think I'll stay, thanks," John tells her, and then, to Stan, "What brings you out at this late hour?"

"It was too quiet in my place," says Stan. "I could hear myself thinking."

* * *

This in itself is another one of those things that usually drove the murder police to where they are now.

More often than not, those moments where they could hear themselves thinking were the moments where they needed to be around the others, or at the very least, around other people that would make enough noise to drown out their thoughts.

"Well, you came to the right place," says Tim. "It's been one conversation after another here for a while."

"What brings the rest of you here?" Stan asks.

"Nostalgia, mostly," says Kay. "I saw the lights on, before it started getting dark out. Figured I'd come see who was here."

"Of course, it was only me, but apparently, I'm more of a people magnet than I thought," John says mildly. "That might have just been Kay, though."

Abby laughs. "Trust me, it was Kay."

* * *

Outside, there are more popping sounds. A squad car goes by, lights flashing briefly, but there is no siren.

"Something's definitely going on tonight," says Meldrick. "Maybe we should find out what it is."

"We're not cops anymore, remember?" says Mike. "It's not our problem."

"Maybe it isn't your problem, but it's still mine," says Tim. He has taken off the holster he had on when he came in, and it lies there at the end of the bar, a silent reminder that of all the people present, he is the only one still on the lines.

"No one's killed anyone yet," Kay tells him. "It's not your problem until someone dies, remember?"

"With my luck, it'll turn into a redball," Tim replies. The others laugh; he pretends to glare at them as he goes on. "It's not funny. D'you know how many redball cases my shift has picked up over the past year?"

"More than the second shift," says Mike. "I don't know, Bayliss, maybe it _is_ just you."

* * *

People run past the place, their laughter drifting in through the windows.

"Look at that," says Abby, pointing. "How long do you think it's been since any of us looked like that?"

"Years," says Frank. "Time does that to people. Especially time spent on streets like these."

"New York is worse, by a long shot," says John. "You ought to know; you were there for a few years."

"New York is…Well, it's New York," Frank tells him, for once at a loss for words. "Nothing more, nothing less. You can lose yourself there a lot more easily than you can lose yourself here."

"Well, Baltimore _is_ a smaller city," says Megan. Her comment draws amused looks from the others, but none of them say anything.

* * *

More people run by. This time, they are singing, some random new pop song, at the top of their lungs.

"What do you think would happen if we all ran out of the place singing?" Meldrick asks. Kay snorts.

"People would run in the other direction," she says. "We're too old for that kinda thing, you think?"

"Define old," Stan tells her. "This is going to sound clichéd, but you're only as old as you feel."

"I think you mean you're as young as you feel," Abby says, amused. "You know, maybe we should find out what's going on out there."

"Could always turn on the radio to do that," Mike remarks. "It would save any of us having to actually go out there into the cold."

"You've lived in Baltimore how long, Kellerman?" Tim asks. "You can't tell me you aren't used to the cold by now."

"I've lived here all my life, thanks, and I am used to the cold," Mike replies. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

* * *

In all honesty, none of them like the cold.

They've been here for a few hours now, with the exception of Abby, who's only been there for about an hour, and Stan, who just showed up, and none of them want to leave. The place is familiar again, almost comforting now that they're all here under the same roof.

"This place needs some work, I think," says Tim. "Besides the lights. We could have it up and running again in a month or two if we wanted."

"The only question is whether or not we want to," says John. "You forget that this place hasn't really held any sort of draw for us in years."

"It's still like a pull at the seams, though," Tim replies. "Sooner or later, whenever we're all in Baltimore at the same time, we're going to end up here."

"The place never really closed in the first place, no thanks to either one of you," Meldrick tells them, "It could work."

* * *

But it will not work with the three of them alone.

It did the first time around, even during that first year after John went to New York. This time around, it will be different.

"If we were to ask you guys what you think," says Tim, turning so that he is looking at the other, "What would you say?"

"Well, if it gives these two clowns something to do," says Kay, casting an amused look first at Meldrick, then at John, "I'd say go for it."

"Might keep us from losing contact the way we did before now," says Megan. "If you think you can pull it off, go ahead."

"This would be assuming that you three aren't going to kill each other before it happens, right?" Mike asks, and then, "Sounds like a good enough idea to me."

"Maybe it shouldn't have gotten to this point in the first place," says Frank. "The bar, and the contact between us, I mean. Megan is right; it could help keep it from happening again."

* * *

Silence. All of them turn so that they are looking at Stan and Abby, neither of whom answer at first.

"Since when do you ask my opinion on anything before you do it, anyway?" Abby says to John. "You'd better know what you're getting into this time."

"Somehow, I don't think any of us knew what we were getting into in the first place," Stan remarks. "If it's what you three think you want to do, then do it."

"Well, then," says Tim, turning back to look at John and Meldrick, "What say you?"

"Considering we got both Stan and Abby to agree on something, for once, I think we should run with it while we have the chance," John says. Abby rolls her eyes at him.

"I argue with you a lot more than I argue with him," she says. "Of course, you can be a lot more annoying, so this is probably why, but still…"

"If you've nothing better to do than insult me, then keep your comments to yourself."

"Now, why would I do that?"

* * *

Uniformed officers walk by, holding a conversation of their own. They are followed by a few plainclothes officers, also holding a conversation. More popping sounds come soon after they disappear.

"Fireworks?" says Megan, more of a question than a statement. "What time is it?"

Stan looks at his watch. "Close to midnight," he says. "About twenty minutes till."

"We _have_ been here for a while," says Kay, sounding startled. "What time was it when you got here, John?"

"Around six," John replies. "You came in about half an hour after me, didn't you?"

Somewhere along the line, all of them lost track of time. Now that they have track of it again, all of them are somewhat surprised by how late it has gotten.

Still, none of them want to leave. They have again that link that they used to have, years ago, and none of them want to break it.

"Hey, you guys," Tim says, suddenly, having noticed a calendar hanging on the wall behind the bar. "D'you know what day it is?"

"Enlighten us, Bayliss," says Frank. "You obviously know the answer, and none of us are in the mood for riddles."

Tim looks back towards the rest of the group. "It's New Years' Eve."

* * *

That explains the people.

It also explains the squad cars, and the singing, and the laughter, and maybe even the popping sounds.

"You might be right," Meldrick says to Megan. "It probably is fireworks."

Already, Kay is wandering back over to the bar, taking her coat from the bar stool she was sitting on and pulling it on.

"Why don't we go find out?" she asks, and without waiting for the others, pulls the doors open to go outside.

Behind her, the rest of them exchange glances before getting up and pulling on their coats so that they can follow her.

* * *

Tim is the last one to show up on the rooftop of the headquarters building. He carries a box with him, one that the others notice, but say nothing about.

Kay and Megan are already sitting on two of the swings on the old metal swing set that has been there for years, part of an early department initiative to get kids off the streets. Behind them are Mike and Meldrick, both of them having been called upon to pull back on the swings and then let go.

"So, we're too old to run around singing at the top of our lungs, but we're not too old to play on the swings?" Tim asks. Kay makes a face at him.

"No, we're not," she says, "And besides that, no one's going to come up here looking for us, so we're not going to be seen."

"Unless you see black helicopters flying overhead," John remarks. Kay rolls her eyes.

"How about you make one of your New Years' Resolutions to quit with the conspiracies, huh?" she asks, only half-joking.

"Maybe next year," John retorts, smirking. "This year, I think they'll stay."

* * *

"How close are we to midnight now?" Mike asks, as he once more lets go of the swing Megan is in.

"We've got about ten minutes," Frank replies, looking at his own watch. "Surely you can handle being out here for that much longer."

"That isn't what I meant," says Mike, and then, "So…any hopes for the new year?"

"Less blood on the streets."

The remark comes from Meldrick, Tim, Kay and Megan at the same time. They were the last ones on the old line to serve as shift lieutenants. To hear this from them makes sense, though all of them are thinking the same thing.

"Life, and love, and everything in between," says Abby. "And for no harm to come over the ones who protect this city."

"Keeping contact with the ones we worked with," Stan remarks. "That, and keeping things from getting too quiet around here."

"This is Baltimore," says Mike, "Nothing's ever too quiet around here." He trails off for a moment, and then goes on. "I hope that I can be there for whoever needs me to be, including the lot of you. That, and I hope the new first shift's clearance rates start going up, otherwise we're all gonna have to come back and teach them a lesson."

* * *

Everyone laughs at this one, even Tim, the current leader of the 'new' first shift.

"I might just have to take you up on that," he says. "Don't tempt me."

Frank looks at his watch. "Seven minutes left."

Below them, there is the sound of more singing. Kay and Megan continue going back and forth on the swings, but now, Abby has joined them, and as the three of them go up, they look down at the men standing there watching them.

"You wish you could look as good as we do up here," Abby tells them. "Take a picture, boys, it lasts longer."

As of on cue, Tim pulls out a camera, and snaps a picture, the flash momentarily blinding them all.

"Should've done that a while ago," he remarks. "I'll have to get a shot of all of us before we split up again, I think."

* * *

"You had hours on end to do that back in the bar, and you're only just doing it now?" Mike asks.

Tim shrugs. "I forgot I had the camera in my coat pocket," he says. "How much time do we have now, Frank?"

"Five minutes, and counting down," Frank replies. "This has been a hell of a way to spend a New Years' Eve, no?"

It has been. It has also been a while since any of them were all in the same place for this particular holiday.

Even so, none of them would change it.

"So, when do you think you'll retire?" Megan asks, glancing over at Tim in between going down and coming up again. He sighs.

"Few more years, at least," he replies. "Though, now that I look at the lot of you, I'm thinking I should have done it a few years ago."

"Nah," says Mike. "It's boring as hell, trust me." Upon noticing the amused looks from everyone else, he goes on. "Hey, you don't see nearly as much as a PI, and trust me when I say it's not as interesting."

"We'll take your word for it," says Frank, and then, "Two minutes."

* * *

Above them, fireworks go off, in all different colors.

The sounds of singing get even louder now, and the words of Auld Lang Syne are clearly heard.

"Here we go again," says Kay, finally coming down and stopping, dragging her feet in the gravel surrounding the swing set. "One more year."

"One more chance to screw things up and fix them up again," says Abby, but Tim shakes his head at her, opening the box he brought with him.

In it are a number of glasses, and a couple of bottles of champagne. He shakes it for a few seconds, passes around the glasses, then pops the first bottle open just as Frank declares it midnight.

Once all the glasses are filled, he holds his own up, and looks directly at everyone else before speaking.

"One more chance to live," he says. "Happy New Year."


End file.
